Playgrounds to Outdoor Learning Environments

We are setting the stage for the children to understand the beauty of being outdoors, to understand creativity, to understand exploration, to just understand that they can figure something out, they can look for answers, and they can just make things work. When children are playing, they are learning. They're exploring the world, they're exploring their relationships, their feelings about each other. It's a very holistic kind of process, and it's basically how kids learn. The impact on the preschool children leaving the program, I believe, is just a change in habits of going outside and playing, making better choices with snack or just food in general. They're really excited about the garden, about going to get tomatoes off the vine. The majority of young children are enrolled in child care centers. This is where they get most of their physical activity and develop habits that will track throughout adulthood. The outdoors can be designed to support these good habits. I believe that being outside is less stressful for them, and having the nature around them has been, I think, amazing. Of course, I'm passionate about it too, so having them get dirty, play in the dirt, and have that opportunity to not be told, You can't do that, put the bugs down. Instead, encouraging them to play with the bugs and learn about them and explore. We know that after renovation, children are more active. The teachers have less custodial behaviors, meaning they have to do less because children are so engaged with the environment that they have to only bring some toys and facilitate play, and then play flows. Very small changes can make a huge difference. And maybe the most fascinating thing to me is that the simple addition of a circulating pathway makes kids move. The Natural Learning Initiative uses a number of design principles appropriate for healthy childhood development. These principles include increasing shade, planting trees and shrubs, creating vegetable gardens, adding curvy looped pathways, installing lawns, planting fruit trees and vines, providing natural materials, adding outdoor toys and storage, ensuring at least 10 settings in a space, including settings for gross motor activity, and creating outdoor classrooms with storage. All of these design principles work together to create an integrated environment that supports all the needs of the children that are using them. The community participation process engages the broader community of stakeholders and involves staff in making design decisions, which results in low-cost, high-impact developments on the ground. The design workshop is the most exciting part of the design process. We've done the survey and met with stakeholders, and now we're sitting with the staff of the child care center, usually the director and some of the lead teachers and maybe some parents. We're engaged in a hands-on process developing the design program, which is mainly a paper record of what their needs are. Every center has a different kind of space, different shape, different size, a different size of population, so every project's different, and that's what makes it very interesting for us. By the end of the workshop, which lasts about a day, the design's totally figured out. We use pieces of construction paper to help us make really quick decisions, and then we bring that back to the office, draw it up and fine-tune the design over a matter of weeks until it becomes the final master plan for the center. These are living landscapes, and the growth of the landscape is like the growth of a child. It's incremental. It won't happen overnight. So you take it piece by piece. Sometimes it's planting trees, a garden here, a garden there, and in a couple of years, you have a very, very high-quality outdoor learning environment. The directors and the teachers tell us that the behavior of the children change. They also say there is more harmony outside. There is much more to do. Children with special needs are more integrated because there is always something to do for them, and they are so proud of their gardens that it's probably their great success. Playing in nature can increase science learning and school readiness. The number of happy faces is one gauge of success. A high quality in the outdoors is an environment that supports the interest of children, that supports play activities, that supports their learning, that supports the curriculum where the teacher can go outside not only for children to exercise, but for learning.